Mathematics Education Colloquium Series

Title: Math Strong: Amplifying Equity and Justice in Mathematics Education Research and Practice

Date: 03/15/2017

Time: 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM

Place: 252 EH

Speaker: Julia Aguirre, University of Washington, Tacoma

In this interactive talk, Dr. Aguirre will challenge math education researchers to amplify equity in research and practice. We will discuss fundamental questions about mathematics education and its role in perpetuating systems of power, privilege and oppression. Through exploration of various empirical, instructional, and organizational tools, we will identify concrete actions as math educators to disrupt the negative effects of these systems and re-align our intent and impact to cultivate a more just and equitable mathematics education experience for our nation’s youth.

Student Geometry/Topology

Title: Introduction to Mapping Class Groups

Date: 03/16/2017

Time: 3:00 PM - 3:50 PM

Place: C304 Wells Hall

Speaker: Michael Shultz, MSU

We will introduce mapping class groups of surfaces, give several specific examples, and then discuss finite generating sets for mapping class groups of surfaces that are oriented, connected, compact, with possibly finitely many punctures.

Colloquium

Title: Using geometry and combinatorics to move robots quickly.

Date: 03/16/2017

Time: 4:10 PM - 5:00 PM

Place: C304 Wells Hall

Speaker: Federico Ardilla, SFSU

How do we move a robot quickly from one position to another? To answer this question, we need to understand the 'space of possibilities” containing all possible positions of the robot. Unfortunately, these spaces are tremendously large and high-dimensional, and are very difficult to visualize. Fortunately, geometers and algebraists have encountered and studied these kinds of spaces before. Thanks to the tools they’ve developed, we can build “remote controls” to navigate these complicated spaces, and move (some) robots optimally.
This talk is based on joint work with my students Arlys Asprilla, Tia Baker, Hanner Bastidas, César Ceballos, John Guo, and Rika Yatchak. It will be accessible to undergraduate students, and assume no previous knowledge of the subject.

Topical Seminar for Undergraduate Mathematicians

Title: Composition algebras: from a Dublin bridge to your cellphone

Date: 03/17/2017

Time: 4:10 PM - 5:00 PM

Place: C304 Wells Hall

Speaker: Jon Hall, MSU

In 1843 Sir William Rowan Hamilton scratched
the quaternions onto a bridge in Dublin,
and in 1998 Siavash M. Alamouti used them as
a coding scheme, now embedded in hundreds
of millions of cellphones. In discussing
this we also touch on combinatorial
designs, sums of squares, and those odd
towers in your local supermarket parking
lot.

Applied Mathematics

Title: When medical challenges meet time series analysis and manifold learning

Date: 03/17/2017

Time: 4:10 PM - 5:00 PM

Place: 1502 Engineering Building

Speaker: Hau-Tieng Wu, University of Toronto

Adaptive acquisition of correct features from massive datasets
is at the core of modern data analysis. One particular interest in
medicine is the extraction of hidden dynamics from an observed time series
composed of multiple oscillatory signals. The mathematical and statistical
problems are made challenging by the structure of the signal which
consists of non-sinusoidal oscillations with time varying amplitude and
time varying frequency, and by the heteroscedastic nature of the noise. In
this talk, I will discuss recent progress in solving this kind of problem.
Based on the cepstrum-based nonlinear time-frequency analysis and manifold
learning technique, a particular solution will be given along with its
theoretical properties. I will also discuss the application of this method
to two medical problems – (1) the extraction of a fetal ECG signal from a
single lead maternal abdominal ECG signal; (2) the simultaneous extraction
of the instantaneous heart rate and instantaneous respiratory rate from a
PPG signal during exercise. If time permits, an extension to multiple-time
series will be discussed.